Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Whew! What a "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" day!

Last Wednesday as I perused Twitter I came across the SLJ Jeff Kinney webcast for the release of Cabin Fever. I immediately registered and then emailed my staff to see if anyone was interested in participating. One of my enthusiastic 6th grade Language Arts teachers responded and an idea was born. We decided to make a whole day of it with the entire team of 100+ students.

My day started at 6:30 am as I went to Wal-Mart to buy 10 copies of the book. I spent the morning getting ready for the day which started with the 10 am webcast. What a great job Kinney did getting the students excited about the new book. It was also a treat that the actors from the movie were also present. Now, we had planned everything around an hour long webcast, so when it ended at 10:40 we had to do some rearranging.

Immediately following the webcast we did a bullying activity that our counselor helped me develop. Students were able to draw or write about a time they were bullied. After students had time to respond, we allowed them to share their experiences and talk about ways they could handle these situations. Originally we had planned to have them role-play these and the solution, but with so many students in our media center with limited space it just was not practical.

A majority of students had read at least one of the books in the series, so we were able to ask questions related to the book. Prior to lunch we played a game of True or False with questions from event kits associated with the release of the various books.

After lunch we came back and did a trivia game with DOWK aficionados on a panel. The winner of each of the three rounds received candy. I took some time to introduce the book and encouraged students to make some predictions. We then did a lottery for the opportunity to be one of the first 10 to checkout the book. Needless to say there were some very excited students. The best part is that two of my most avid DOWK fans won the lottery. The dancing that ensued brought tears to my eyes.

BEST. BOOK. RELEASE. DAY. EVER.

**Thank you card from the students.

2 comments:

  1. KUDOS to Y.O.U. what a great day! I know they loved it...I wanted to stay ALL day! Super job!

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  2. What a fabulous sounding day, and great use of your collaborative resources at school. Bravo!

    ReplyDelete